


The Taste of Butterflies

by thuvia ptarth (thuviaptarth)



Category: Angel Sanctuary
Genre: No Canon Knowledge Required, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-26
Updated: 2008-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-03 06:15:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thuviaptarth/pseuds/thuvia%20ptarth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Mad Hatter is no longer an angel and never was a fool, except for love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Taste of Butterflies

**Author's Note:**

> This is a birthday present for [](http://yhlee.livejournal.com/profile)[**yhlee**](http://yhlee.livejournal.com/). Many thanks to [](http://springgreen.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://springgreen.livejournal.com/)**springgreen** for the beta.

Out in the desert past the reconfigured borders of Heaven and Hell, in the place where the Tower of Entenamenki once stood, Lucifer commanded that a garden be made. Some say that this is the place where he was reborn, his bones thrusting themselves free from the stony earth and then growing, layer by layer, the organs, the coverings of muscle and fat, the intricate irrigation systems of blood and nerves, and the final seal of skin; some say it was not the Earth that pushed him out but a woman who called him up, who gave him her breath for his lungs, her blood for his veins, a white feather from her great wings that filled up with darkness from quill to barb once it took root in his skin.

The garden is guarded by serpents, legged and winged, the monstrous bastards of the dead queen Barbelo, and the serpents are guarded by an endless river, and the river loops through the center of a maze, and the maze is forbidden by Lucifer's iron whim; neither fools nor angels dare to tread there, nor demons neither.

The Mad Hatter is no longer an angel and never was a fool, except for love; and there is no guard sie cannot seduce, nor secret sie cannot uncover, except for love.

So the Hatter wanders the pathless garden, passing through the vast spreading green-dappled shade of the towering oaks, and the bare snow-whitened branches of the slender birches, and silk-soft glow of the blossoming cherry trees; when, overheated by exertion, sie removes hir hat, pale petals shake loose from its brim. Fruit trees grow everywhere, for every season and state, bare-branched and green-leafed and blossom and fruit; fallen fruits ripen and rot in the grass and the rich black earth, and the scent of them alone is an unearthly intoxication. Drunken flies cling buzzing to rinds; drunken birds stagger in across the sky, unable to or uninterested in claiming the swooning, swooping butterflies that linger ridiculously near.

There are a few traces of demonkind: a broken throne overgrown with moss, cracked apart by thorny vines; an iron table tumbled down amidst the wreckage of chairs, atop a white tablecloth stained by tea and dirt and jam and birdshit. The Hatter steps daintily over porcelain shards, spying the glint of a tiny, half-tarnished spoon. Sie twirls it between finger and thumb, then drops it, bored.

A serpent coiled round the branch of an apple tree hisses a warning, its forked tongue tasting the sky and its golden wings beating hummingbird-fast.

"Tell me," the Hatter murmurs, "have you seen my lord?"

The serpent drools a string of venom from its fangs and the Hatter catches the drip on hir fingertips, then sucks them clean. "Silly beast. There are not many poisons that can slay _me."_

"And yet," says the serpent, "you've dared eat none of this garden's fruit." Its voice, like the Hatter's, is too low for a woman's and too high for a man's.

The Hatter caresses the rainbow crest upon the serpent's head. "Are you speaking, my friend, or do I hallucinate?"

"I am not your friend," the serpent answers, uncoiling so fast its tail whips a crimson stripe across the Hatter's palm, and flies off. The Hatter follows, nursing hir swollen hand, and stumbling often because hir eyes are on the sky, not the ground. Sie loses hir hat somewhere, and then hir long candy-striped coat, because it's too hot to wear and too heavy to carry, and then hir high-heeled boots, because a heel breaks when sie trips; the black lace stockings, miraculously, are dirtied but not torn, at least not until sie trips again and looks up from hir hands and knees to find hir guide long gone.

If it ever was there. Hir mouth is painfully dry and full of a taste all the more bitter for the hint of a terrible, wonderful sweetness behind it; hir temples pound as if every pulse beat is a hammer blow; and sie is as disheveled as a drunk coming off a week-long bender, straps of hir camisole falling loose off hir shoulders, hir stockings dirty at the knees, torn on hir right thigh, runs along the back of hir left calf. Sie has been careful not to eat of the fruit of the garden, nor drink from its streams, but perhaps sie was stricken by the fumes of the fallen fruit alone. Even now the scent dizzies hir, delicious almost beyond bearing.

"Oh, lord," sie sighs, "what a fool I be for love."

Sie raises hir head and sees Alexiel.

The Organic Angel sleeps on her side, with her dark head pillowed on a lioness's flank, its cubs nestling into her sides, shining gold through her midnight hair; one kit nuzzles her breast, opening its mouth in a tiny pink yawn, displaying a long rough tongue and very sharp teeth. The slope of Alexiel's hip is the same curve as the head of an unopened rose.

The Hatter has lost the coat in whose secret pockets hid daggers and guns and vials of rare poison, the boots in whose linings lay two short swords, the hat under which hid secrets sie never tells; but sie has hir lace stockings and hir garter belt with black silk straps that encase long and poisoned pins, and sie has hir kiss which enthralls and bemazes and hir tongue which is more useful still. Sie pulls loose a pin, then holds it between clenched teeth as sie creeps up to Alexiel. Alexiel was one of Heaven's foremost generals, and the Hatter is no fool; sie is not ashamed to crawl.

Creep and crawl, crawl and creep, belly brushing the grass and nose up against the dirt; creep and crawl, crawl and creep, up to the feet, their dirt-smeared rosy soles and their toenails shining as pale as ten tiny moons; up past the delicate bump of the ankle and smooth muscular sweep of calf; up past the sweet heavy flesh of the thigh, the shadow below the gentle swell of the belly, the generous round of the ass; up past the ribs, a temptation to any tongue, and the breasts more perfect than any fruit; up past the sweet, vulnerable neck and ah! there, the mouth, half-parted, as if waiting for the Hatter to bend down and kiss--

The world roars and whirls and shakes its kaleidescope pieces out: the Hatter is flat on hir back, Alexiel kneeling over hir, heavy warmth weighting down hir arms and legs and someone's breath sour and oven-hot on hir forehead.

"Quiet," Alexiel commands, and the world falls silent. A dozen pins prick hir scalp and an inaudible growl rumbles through hir hair: the lioness is at hir head, the Hatter realizes, blinking stupidly, and those must be the cubs at hir feet. Alexiel is turning the fatal pin between her fingers; her eyebrows quirk at the butterfly-shaped head or perhaps its tiny black and scarlet beads.

"Oh, Belial." Alexiel holds the point of the pin to the Hatter's pulse, apparently carelessly, but without quite touching the skin. "What am I to do with you?"

"No one but my lord may call me that now," the Hatter says, as if sie's unafraid, though sie knows Alexiel can read the beating of hir heart, the dilation of hir pupils, the rankness of hir sweat.

"You saved the princess of the Evils once." Alexiel stabs the pin deep in the ground. "I count that a favor."

"Don't be a fool," the Hatter says, pride stung. Sie is one of the seven Great Satans. Sie seduces, sie connives, sie tricks, sie lies; sie does naïve little princesses no _kindnesses_, great angels no _favors_. "I'd serve her bloody bones up to my lord again if he only asked me to."

Alexiel shakes her head, resting gentle fingers on the tattoo whose wings tremble with the Hatter's rage. "Butterflies are change and transformation, Hatter. Will you remain as you are forever?"

The Hatter had forgotten what Alexiel's eyes were like: Lucifer's eyes are mirrors or stones, impenetrable, casting back nothing but your reflection; Alexiel's eyes are infinite depths, pulling you in before you realize you've drowned. Distantly, the Hatter realizes the lions have removed their weight, may have even gone from the clearing; it doesn't matter. Alexiel herself is the gravity that holds hir down. Sie remembers what it's like, when Lucifer kneels to Alexiel: he is so full of her he doesn't even have contempt to spare for anyone else.

"Let me go, Savior." Defeat tastes bitter as consummated love. "I'm no threat to you." Sie shifts, rubbing hir thighs together: they can both hear it, skin brushing against skin, lace scratching against lace. The Hatter bares hir teeth, hoping Alexiel will think the mockery is directed at her. "Unless you want me to spread my wings for you."

Alexiel slides her fingers up, parting wings higher up than the butterfly's. The Hatter stiffens in shock, as much at the wet heat called up by Alexiel's touch as by the touch itself.

"That's no change," Alexiel says sadly, "you spread your wings for everyone," but she lowers her mouth to the spread wings just the same.

Pleasure is like slipping into a bath so hot that you shiver all over your skin in that first second, when the water seems to scald; pleasure is the slow heat of wine coating your tongue, sliding down your throat. Pleasure is the giddiness of being proven right, the sour satisfaction of corruption victorious again. This, this isn't pleasure, Alexiel's touch, Alexiel's teeth, Alexiel's tongue; this isn't pleasure, this pressure pumped through your veins with every beat of your heart, pressed so hard against your skin that it's going to burst open at the weak points, at the pulse points in the throat, in the wrists, in the groin, at the tightness of your nipples, the knot of nerves in your clit. This bursting open, bursting apart, this blinding glare in your eyes --

Coming down: breath rattling in lungs, fingers digging into the earth, sweat drying clammy on hir skin. Sie blinks, and blinks again: the blinding whiteness above resolves into the feathers of Alexiel's outspread wings. That's the sweet-smelling softness against hir cheeks and outer arms, comforting as nothing else the Hatter has ever known.

Alexiel presses against hir, her breasts a wonderful heaviness on the Hatter's chest, her lips glistening with the Hatter's slickness, her cheeks smelling of the Hatter's musk. She is as beautiful and as terrifying as an army with bright banners, as the sun striking off a thousand upraised swords.

"No fruit is forbidden here," she whispers against the Hatter's mouth. "Taste."


End file.
